MusicRadar's review of the year: 2009

The biggest music stories of the last 12 months

January

Age-old tradition dictates that the music-making year is kicked off with a very special ceremony indeed – and 2009 was no different. So, with Christmas seemingly a distant memory, the entire industry jumped in planes, flew over to Orange County, California and released bucketloads of cool new products.

The 2009 Winter NAMM show might have taken place during the peak of an economic whiteout but that didn’t stop it being any less fruitful – in fact, bounties in hi-tech were the largest in years, with NAMM witnessing the launch of the market-shaking Akai APC40 Ableton Live controller to name just one product.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, MusicRadar was becoming embroiled in a bizarre fact-battle with the BBC over the supposed break-up of Led Zeppelin, which took a phone call or six to Zep’s manager and a whole lot of head-scratching to straighten out. Check out our timeline of critical events to find out how a then year-old story managed to resurface and bamboozle the entire internet.

February also saw the world of comics and music collide with the release of the Watchmen film - or at least its soundtrack. To our ears, it was missing a few tunes, so here are 9 songs that should have made it instead.

March

2009 was the year of the supergroup, and The Dead Weather were its first. The latest brainchild of rock polymath Jack White, the band launched in March comprising Kills singer Alison Mosshart, Raconteur Jack Lawrence on bass, Queens Of The Stone Age's Dean Fertita on guitar with White drumming and providing additional vocals.

The Dead Weather bucked the supergroup trend and actually went on to be wildly successful, releasing critically acclaimed album Horehound and hitting audiences with some storming live shows (live From The Basement was our favourite).

Speaking of events, the announcement of The Beatles: Rock Band was a big ‘un - news that there was to be a themed edition of the ridiculously popular game franchise featuring original Beatles recordings took everyone by surprise, and was the first chapter in what was to be a very good year for the fab four (skip to September…).

April

The niftiest tech thing of the year was surely the OP-1 from Swedish techno wildcards Teenage Engineering.

First seen at Frankfurt Musikmesse, the miniature synth/sequencer/drum machine/keyboard/kitchen sink turned heads across the internet with its neat design and innovation (check out our video demo of the OP-1 here) - although the fact that it still hasn’t reached beta has led some to speculate the gadget is ‘vapourware’.

There were, of course, many other cool new products at this year’s Musikmesse, and MusicRadar was on location filming more video than ever before. See all our coverage here.

Finally for April, the theme from Doctor Who - originally realised by sound design pioneer and general hi-tech community darling Delia Derbyshire - was voted the greatest TV sci-fi theme by a poll. Which was nice.

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May

Record! May saw Reason-maker Propellerhead finally release a full DAW - a product which would combine the ‘virtual rack’ of Reason with audio recording and editing capabilities, all routed through an emulation of an SSL desk.

Propellerhead’s Record was possibly the biggest new product of the year and, after being released in September, it’s going strong. MusicRadar was there when it all started and filmed this video of launch day featuring interviews with the Props and more.

Chickenfoot was this year’s second supergroup and the release of their album in June was preceded by colossal hype. The ‘foot, made up of Joe Satriani, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Chad Smith, went on to play a series of smokin’ sell-out shows, one of which resulted in the fire department being called out (really). Satch caused further fuss in June by breaking his longstanding alliance with Peavey and switching back to Marshall for amplification.

Meanwhile, on the greyer, muddier side of the pond: festivals! We clearly couldn’t go to every one of the hundreds of UK summer festivals June had to offer, so we hedged our bets on Glastonbury and Download being the best. The gamble paid off, too - see our Glastonbury picture diary and our Download video highlights for coverage of mud, tents, rock stars, mankinis and more.

Anti-Auto-Tune sentiment boiled over in June. A year of rampant and unchecked pitch correction had been met with a harsh backlash from Jay-Z, Death Cub For Cutie and other heavyweight stars in preceding weeks, but the online “Auto-Tune must die” campaign at www.deathofauto-tune.com was the most focused and definite attack yet.

July

July, for MusicRadar at least, was all about It Might Get Loud, the rockumentary about the individual approaches to guitar of three massive stars: Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. We managed to borrow all three rock gods for a four-way interview on the making of the film.

Meanwhile, on the tech side of the July coin, Apple was releasing Logic Studio 9. The latest iteration of the do-it-all DAW added new toys for guitarists in the shape of the Amp Designer and Pedalboard modelling plug-ins, plus elastic audio-style functionality dubbed Flex Time, Drum Replacer and more.

OS X Snow Leopard arrived in August - key features of Apple’s new operating system such as improved mutli-thread processor support and disk space savings pleased music makers, although legacy users were inevitably peeved at Apple finally dropping support of PowerPC machines.

August also hosted a major new music festival. It might have been Sonisphere’s first year but that didn’t stop the event taking place across multiple countries and bagging some serious big name headliners - including Metallica, Linkin Park and Avenged Sevenfold.

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September

Beatlemania returned in 2009 and peaked in September.

First there was the release of The Beatles Remastered box set (check out our comprehensive reviews of ’63-’66 and ’67-’70 for everything you’d ever need to know about both the mono and stereo versions). Next there was The Beatles: Rock Band, finally released in September (read the review from our resident Beatles specialist for more).

Speaking of really cool products, October had another up its sleeve: The Eigenharp. It might look like the kind of cosmic techno-bassoon you’d expect to only be good for playing the Star Wars Cantina theme, but Eigenlabs head honcho John Lambert insisted the Eigenharp is a tool for serious musicians. After attending the launch event, we’re inclined to agree with him. Check out the video for more.

On the slightly less cool but equally welcome side of tech was the release of Windows 7 – an OS that has massive potential for future music-making app development given its memory and multi-thread processing capabilities.

November also yet another 2009 supergroup: Them Crooked Vultures. Comprising Josh Homme on vocals and guitar, Dave Grohl on drums and Zep’s John Paul Jones on bass, the band’s super-album was, after those of Chickenfoot (see June) and The Dead Weather (see March), the third of the year to be met with critical acclaim.

December

The month isn’t over quite yet but it’s still seen some pretty big music news. John Frusciante quit the Red Hot Chili Peppers (actually, it seems he quit some time ago - we just couldn’t tell you ‘til now) sending shockwaves around the musosphere.

There was further upset when Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name beat X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s debut to the Christmas number one spot. Controversial - but not quite as controversial as the week before when, playing live, RATM swore all over Nicky Campbell’s breakfast radio show despite apparently promising they wouldn’t. The line in question, “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!”, was probably a clue.

Then there was the Gibson Dusk Tiger - the US guitar giant’s latest robo-axe. The Dusk Tiger was packed with technology (check out our picture overview) being the most advanced model in the Robot Guitar series yet, and it also featured one of the most innovative (if divisive) designs to come out of the Gibson camp in years.